Speaker 1: Pushkin Quick heads Up. This episode contains depictions of violence
Speaker 1: that may be upsetting to some listeners. In a small,
Speaker 1: elegant apartment in Hollywood, a young man sits on his
Speaker 1: couch looking out the open window, remembering the saddest day
Speaker 1: of his life. His name is Felipe Navarro, thirty years old, short,
Speaker 1: black hair, a beautiful, wide smile. Angel was my brother.
Speaker 1: It was my only sibling. We were born exactly like
Speaker 1: a year and two weeks apart. So my birthday is
Speaker 1: mid October and he was born the following year on Halloween.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning and this was the end. He
Speaker 1: died Thursday, May twenty sixteen, and it was about to
Speaker 1: be Friday, Memorial Day weekend, and we were not notified
Speaker 1: until that Sunday morning, and they claimed that they couldn't
Speaker 1: find us, even though they had his wallet, and he's
Speaker 1: an ID. So then come sent that Sunday. My parents
Speaker 1: had gone to breakfast and they came back and there's
Speaker 1: about four or five cop cars at their home. Angel
Speaker 1: had been in New Mexico visiting with a friend. Philippe
Speaker 1: and their parents were in California. Philippe doesn't know why
Speaker 1: it took so long for the New Mexico police to
Speaker 1: notify them three days, didn't his brother have his ID
Speaker 1: on him? And even after the police came, the Navarros
Speaker 1: didn't know what happened to Angel. I called a detective,
Speaker 1: and every time I spoke to her, they were like, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like we can't give you any information because it's still
Speaker 1: under investigation. And everything was always under investigation. And at
Speaker 1: first I didn't really think anything any sort of malice
Speaker 1: on the police department, because I don't even think I
Speaker 1: knew at that point that he had been killed by
Speaker 1: the police, and I certainly didn't even know the backstory
Speaker 1: of how he even got into that altercation with the police.
Speaker 1: I should say incident, no altercation, But I think all
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out was what had happened.
Speaker 1: Angel Navarro was killed by the police on Interstate twenty
Speaker 1: five in New Mexico outside Alburquerque on May twenty six,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. The officers fired twenty seven times. They thought
Speaker 1: Navarro had a gun in his hand. He didn't. He
Speaker 1: had a cell phone. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: This is the final episode in my three part mini
Speaker 1: series on thinking like a Jesuit. I will you now
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about in this episode is not for
Speaker 1: the faint of heart. I heard about the shooting of
Speaker 1: Angel Navarro because I went to see a forensic criminologist
Speaker 1: named Ron Martinelli. Martinelli works out of a white ranch
Speaker 1: house in Texas Hill Country, half an hour north of
Speaker 1: San Antonio. He's in his sixties, built like a prize fighter, bald, thick,
Speaker 1: mustache pickup truck. Likes to be called Doctor Ron. I
Speaker 1: had been obsessed with a police guideline called the twenty
Speaker 1: one foot rule and thought Martinelli could help me, But
Speaker 1: then we got off on tangents and never returned. I
Speaker 1: was a tactical officer. I'm a firearms instructor. I'm a
Speaker 1: firearms expert. I've been involved in officer involved shootings. Martinelli
Speaker 1: is an investigator. An instant occurs. He gets called in
Speaker 1: to go over the evidence and figure out what happened, reconstruct,
Speaker 1: interpret was there a crime? And I sympathize on both
Speaker 1: sides with regards to officer. I've handled officer involved shootings
Speaker 1: for the defense and I've handled officer involved shootings for plaintiffs.
Speaker 1: How many officer involved shooting cases have you done over
Speaker 1: the course of hundreds? Hundreds? Yeah. Martin Elly wrote a
Speaker 1: book a few years ago called The Truth Behind the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter Movement and the War on Police. It
Speaker 1: has chapters on Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, other cases in the news.
Speaker 1: You want to know about the Rodney King beating, maybe
Speaker 1: the most infamous example of police brutality in recent American history.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ron has a lot to say about it. The baton,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have used it. I wouldn't used the pepper spray.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have worked. There's more dynamics, chemical dynamics involved
Speaker 1: with pepper spray. They wouldn't just hears the deal. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't have worked. At one point we went outside in
Speaker 1: the garden behind his house and we acted out an
Speaker 1: arrest scenario. I was the cop. He was playing the
Speaker 1: bad guy. He gave me a handgun and took another
Speaker 1: for himself. The wind was howling. It was all a
Speaker 1: bit surreal. My job was to take him into custody.
Speaker 1: We ran through the scenario three times. He shot me
Speaker 1: dead three times. I had the feeling I wasn't the
Speaker 1: first person shot dead in Doctor Ron's backyard. We went
Speaker 1: back inside. Okay, so we're gonna play a kid's game,
Speaker 1: so just hold your hand out just like that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to hit your hand. Yeah okay. So
Speaker 1: I've already told you I'm gonna hit your hand, so
Speaker 1: your expectation is I'm going to hit your hand. So
Speaker 1: it's really simple. My hands right here, and you just
Speaker 1: move it so you don't get hit. Are you ready?
Speaker 1: I was ready. His hand was about a foot above mine.
Speaker 1: I knew he was going to slap me. I still
Speaker 1: couldn't get my hand out of the way in time.
Speaker 1: You're ready, Yeah, you see that. Okay, you get it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about action, reaction, perception, lag time. Every
Speaker 1: kid knows how that game plays out. Action is always
Speaker 1: faster than reaction. The person who decides to initiate the
Speaker 1: slap can always get your hand before you can react.
Speaker 1: That was my problem out in the backyard, he said,
Speaker 1: I was afraid of being too aggressive. But if you
Speaker 1: wait for the other person to pull their gun, you'll
Speaker 1: end up dead. Okay, let me set this up for you.
Speaker 1: Martinelli pulled out his laptop. He had a YouTube video
Speaker 1: he wanted to show me that proved his point about
Speaker 1: action and reaction. Swat team's got a warrant on a
Speaker 1: guy on weapons charges. Because they bring a whole swat
Speaker 1: team with them. Everybody's armed, heavily armed, already got car
Speaker 1: beans on them. Every guns are being pointed at this guy.
Speaker 1: They do the knock, the door opens. Here's the guy.
Speaker 1: He's standing about ten feet away, maybe twelve feet away.
Speaker 1: He's in the living room. He's got a T shirt,
Speaker 1: he's wearing shorts. He's got a gun in his right hand,
Speaker 1: and the gun is down at his side. So the
Speaker 1: question is how long does it take someone with the
Speaker 1: gun at their side to raise up and accurately fire
Speaker 1: Before you can fire? Action, reaction, perception, lagtime. It's human factors.
Speaker 1: Martinelli presses play. Their only problem is they talk to
Speaker 1: him too much. Hilo, Hilo. There's the gun. You see
Speaker 1: the gun, drop the gun, to drop the gun. The
Speaker 1: video is from a camera carried by one of the cops,
Speaker 1: so that's the perspective we're seeing. It's all jumping and confusing.
Speaker 1: We're looking over the shoulder of one of the officers
Speaker 1: at the man. In the T shirt. He looks like
Speaker 1: he just got out of bed. Then suddenly there are
Speaker 1: shots shouting. It all happened very quickly. So what happened
Speaker 1: I totally wouldn't. You weren't ready for it. He had.
Speaker 1: So the guy has a gun, raised that gun up
Speaker 1: in twenty five hundreds of a second and shot two
Speaker 1: of them, and then they returned fire, and they killed him.
Speaker 1: Their guns already pointed at him, already pointed at him.
Speaker 1: He has his gun hanging down by his side, and
Speaker 1: he manages to get to shoot two of them before
Speaker 1: they kill him. Right, and they're trained swat officers, right,
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. Okay, My thought watching that video was that
Speaker 1: the cops seemed really aggressive with their body armor and
Speaker 1: automatic weapons, shouting and breaking down someone's door. Martinelli's point
Speaker 1: was that they weren't aggressive enough. They got shot. They
Speaker 1: could have been killed. What was all this? Endless? Dropped
Speaker 1: the gun, dropped the gun. But there they get shot
Speaker 1: because they don't want to shoot him. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell the guy eighteen times to put the
Speaker 1: guy down. Okay, what would you have done but it
Speaker 1: shot him? You would? Oh yeah, as soon as soon
Speaker 1: as that, and as soon as I saw that in
Speaker 1: start to come up, I want to let loose, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I understand the human factors they don't understand. Martinelli
Speaker 1: played the video again. There were nuances he wanted to
Speaker 1: show me, like how the officers were holding their body
Speaker 1: shields all wrong. This is what he does for a living.
Speaker 1: He watches people kill each other in order to figure
Speaker 1: out who did what and why, which requires him to
Speaker 1: go over and over things that in a perfect world
Speaker 1: no one should have to see. Even once, he told
Speaker 1: me that he wakes up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night sometimes and finds himself rearranging bodies in his mind.
Speaker 1: It was then, since we were already on the topic
Speaker 1: of police officers shooting people, that he brought up a
Speaker 1: case he just finished working on one. That's when we return.
Speaker 1: In the two previous episodes, I talked about the method
Speaker 1: of moral reasoning called casuistry, the Jesuit way of thinking.
Speaker 1: The Jesuits believed in the importance of descending into the particular,
Speaker 1: of setting aside principles and engaging in the specifics of
Speaker 1: the case in question. One of the Jesuits I consulted
Speaker 1: with was a priest named James Martin, who spoke about
Speaker 1: one of the crucial teachings behind this idea, the Jesuit
Speaker 1: notion of disordered attachments. The person who's discerning should be
Speaker 1: like the porter on a balance. Should be here, shouldn't
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be here like you know, someone's putting your
Speaker 1: finger in the balance. You should be ready. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you're ready to listen to things, which is a
Speaker 1: great insight. We'll say it. So basically, NASA says that
Speaker 1: if you're going to make a decision, you have to
Speaker 1: come without any preconceived notions. You have to be like
Speaker 1: the pointer on a balance, those old scales on the
Speaker 1: supermarket for fruit. You have to be at zero. A
Speaker 1: disordered attachment is not a vice. It's just something that
Speaker 1: gets in the way of us being open minded, being
Speaker 1: free to really listen to what others are saying and feeling.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was a novice, a Jesuit novice,
Speaker 1: my novice director, we would do ministries, different ministries in
Speaker 1: addition to praying in the house and learning about the Jesuits,
Speaker 1: and that was a key part of our work. And
Speaker 1: it was with the poor or the sick. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: where do you want to go. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: let me just say, the last place I want to
Speaker 1: work is an hospital because I just don't like the
Speaker 1: sights and the smells and the sounds and it just
Speaker 1: grosses me out. And he said, well, good, you'll be
Speaker 1: working in a hospital. And it wasn't to be mean,
Speaker 1: it was to free me of that disordered attachment. Martin
Speaker 1: could not be truly capable of service to another because
Speaker 1: he was too attached to his own fears. Let me
Speaker 1: put this same issue of disordered attachments to you. Remember
Speaker 1: what hopen in Ferguson, Missouri in late summer of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: There is growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African American
Speaker 1: teenager were shot and killed by police in the Saint
Speaker 1: Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, but there are conflicting reports
Speaker 1: about what led up to the shooting. NBC's John Yang
Speaker 1: has the details. A police officer named Darren Wilson, here's
Speaker 1: a report that a teenager has allegedly stolen something from
Speaker 1: a convenience store, a box of cigars. He spots eighteen
Speaker 1: year old Michael Brown walking down the middle of the street,
Speaker 1: thinks Brown matches the description of the suspect and pulls over.
Speaker 1: Ninety seconds later, Brown is dead. The black community in
Speaker 1: Ferguson erupts in protest for weeks. The police counter with
Speaker 1: armored cars and snipers and a small army of officers
Speaker 1: in combat. Year people took sides according to whatever ideology
Speaker 1: they were attached to. Either this was about law and
Speaker 1: order and you were on Darren Wilson's side, or this
Speaker 1: was about police brutality and you were on Michael Brown's side.
Speaker 1: So what happened after Ferguson. Well, the following spring, the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice issued two
Speaker 1: reports on the case. The first said, we're not indicting
Speaker 1: officer Darren Wilson. What he did doesn't meet the federal
Speaker 1: legal standard for police misconduct. The second federal report came
Speaker 1: out the same day. It was what's called a patterns
Speaker 1: and practices investigation. It was a broader look at policing
Speaker 1: in Ferguson. One of the principal authors of the second
Speaker 1: report was a lawyer named Chirog Baines. And what we
Speaker 1: found was something I hadn't seen in other departments, but
Speaker 1: I've since learned exists in many places. In America, which
Speaker 1: is a police department and actually an entire criminal justice
Speaker 1: architecture that existed and operated to extract wealth from the community,
Speaker 1: and specifically from the black community in Ferguson. Bains and
Speaker 1: his team arrived in Ferguson two days after Michael Brown
Speaker 1: was killed. They stayed there on and off for five months.
Speaker 1: What they found was that Ferguson was using its police
Speaker 1: department to fund the city's budget, and that colored everything
Speaker 1: that they did know who they arrested, who they stopped,
Speaker 1: who they issued citations to, who got leniency, and who
Speaker 1: was met without any in the court, who was willing
Speaker 1: to cooperate with law enforcement. There are a number of
Speaker 1: emails from the finance director to the police chief asking
Speaker 1: him if he can raise revenues, often by very specific numbers.
Speaker 1: There's one saying, can you increase what the last increase
Speaker 1: you're able to do was seven point five percent over
Speaker 1: last year's revenues. Can you bring that up to ten
Speaker 1: percent this year? Can we get over a million in
Speaker 1: revenues this year? And fines and fees? There's even an
Speaker 1: email where the finance director is suggesting to the police
Speaker 1: chief particular enforcement strategy suggesting that he deploy a certain
Speaker 1: number of overtime officers for traffic enforcement in a certain
Speaker 1: part of the city in order to and this is
Speaker 1: a quote, fill the revenue pipeline. It's very bizarre for
Speaker 1: the finance director to be issuing any kind of inst
Speaker 1: to the police chief on how to deploy patrol officers.
Speaker 1: But that's a window into what the priority was and
Speaker 1: what they decided to use their police force for. Bains
Speaker 1: and his team found evidence at one time officials in
Speaker 1: Ferguson wanted to get rid of an incompetent judge, but
Speaker 1: the city manager said, we can't get rid of him.
Speaker 1: He's too good at levying fines. Police officers were rewarded
Speaker 1: and promoted for their productivity, meaning how many tickets they issued,
Speaker 1: So of course they issued a lot of tickets. Any
Speaker 1: offense would do. Bains remembers one case of a man
Speaker 1: who was sitting in his car at a playground cooling
Speaker 1: off after playing basketball. An officer drove up, blocked the
Speaker 1: man's car and demanded to see an ID. I think
Speaker 1: he said something to the effect of like, there are
Speaker 1: kids here and you're at the park, or what are
Speaker 1: you at, pedophile something I don't know the exact words,
Speaker 1: but that's my sense of what happened from talking to
Speaker 1: the gentlemen. And the officer then orders him out of
Speaker 1: the car, and the guy says, well, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have constitutional rights. I'm just sitting here,
Speaker 1: you know, I just playing ball, And the officer then
Speaker 1: actually pulls his gun on the guy and you know,
Speaker 1: threatening him and insisting that he get out of the car.
Speaker 1: The way the incident ends is that the officer writes
Speaker 1: him up for eight different tickets, including not having a
Speaker 1: seatbelt on he was sitting in his car at the park,
Speaker 1: not having a license, and also having a suspended license.
Speaker 1: He managed to issue both charges eight tickets. One of
Speaker 1: them was for using a false name because the guy
Speaker 1: used his nickname like Tom instead of Thomas. If you
Speaker 1: read the two Department of Justice reports together, what you
Speaker 1: realize is that after Brown's death, both sides in the
Speaker 1: debate were wrong. One side said Darren Wilson shot and
Speaker 1: killed an unarmed teenager in cold blood. Remember, there was
Speaker 1: a big to do about the fact that Michael Brown
Speaker 1: was supposed to have put his hands up and said,
Speaker 1: don't shoot the facts of this case when you look
Speaker 1: at what we found on the criminal side with the
Speaker 1: justice Farton found on the criminal side where that Michael
Speaker 1: Brown didn't have his hands up and he wasn't surrendering
Speaker 1: when he was shot. But that's what people thought, and
Speaker 1: that's the narrative that quickly developed. The DOJ concluded after
Speaker 1: reviewing forensic evidence that at one point Michael Brown reached
Speaker 1: into Wilson's open car window and wrestled with him over
Speaker 1: his gun. For goodness sake, if you think this is
Speaker 1: a case about a rogue cop, he missed the point.
Speaker 1: The shooting of Michael Brown is not about a homicidal cop.
Speaker 1: It's about decades of predatory policing, about the consequences of
Speaker 1: having an entire law enforcement system organized around looting the
Speaker 1: black community. Meanwhile, the other side sees that Wilson is
Speaker 1: not facing federal charges and says, see, we were right.
Speaker 1: The police officer didn't do anything wrong. This case is
Speaker 1: about a breakdown in respect for law and order. But
Speaker 1: that completely misses the point too. Yes, Michael Brown was
Speaker 1: a kid who did not view police power as legitimate,
Speaker 1: but that's because he lived in a town where police
Speaker 1: power was not legitimate, and so for me, it's very
Speaker 1: important that people read both reports. I've spoken on this
Speaker 1: topic a number of times, and i've I'm often speaking
Speaker 1: to a group that's only read one report, or sometimes
Speaker 1: that it has read both reports, or read some parts
Speaker 1: of both reports but only believes one. And I have
Speaker 1: to say it was the same Justice apartment that did
Speaker 1: both reports. There wasn't an agenda here to bury the truth.
Speaker 1: It was a very thorough investigation on both sides. And
Speaker 1: it's rare to find people who read both and believe
Speaker 1: both and understand how they connect. It's rare to find
Speaker 1: people who read both and believe both and understand how
Speaker 1: they connect. It's rare to find people without disordered attachments
Speaker 1: when it comes to police shootings. So Angel Navarro, the
Speaker 1: case Doctor Ron brought up unexpectedly and that I have
Speaker 1: to admit left me shaken. Let's start with a clean slate.
Speaker 1: The shooting of Angel Navarro was captured by the dash
Speaker 1: cam video of one of the officers involved in the incident.
Speaker 1: You cannot find it on the internet. It was not
Speaker 1: released publicly for the longest time. The New Mexico Police
Speaker 1: wouldn't even give it to the Navarro family, which made
Speaker 1: Phelippe Navarro suspicious. He and his parents filed a lawsuit,
Speaker 1: hired two lawyers on contingency, Erica Anderson and Lauren Oliveros.
Speaker 1: My researcher Camille Baptista, went to Los Angeles to talk
Speaker 1: to Phelippe. They sat together for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: He talked about how draining the case was, depositions, motions,
Speaker 1: The whole thing went on for two and a half years.
Speaker 1: His lawyers tried to warn him because it was recorded
Speaker 1: on video the incident, and because of a certain evidence
Speaker 1: that was, you know there. I thought it was sort
Speaker 1: of kind and dry as to what the tape showed
Speaker 1: and what they were arguing and what we were arguing.
Speaker 1: So in my mind that's where I said, I like
Speaker 1: the name. Then I was naive and thinking like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: like the tape's there, like this is evidence. It's like
Speaker 1: the camera doesn't lie, you know. But you know, I
Speaker 1: remember we would have talks about like like how lawsuits work.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I was like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you could possibly justify three people shooting in an unarmed person,
Speaker 1: one person twenty seven times. When did you first see
Speaker 1: the video? You described that you saw the video. We
Speaker 1: did not get the video for I think like six months.
Speaker 1: It was not an easy thing to get. And then
Speaker 1: you saw it, you had like strong feelings about what
Speaker 1: it shows. If I could, you know, put myself in
Speaker 1: their shoes and vice versa, because I did try to
Speaker 1: do that and sort of, okay, let me. I know
Speaker 1: my brother, I know him, you know enough to know
Speaker 1: that what I thought the video was kind of odd
Speaker 1: behavior from him. It seemed a little erratic. This was
Speaker 1: a challenging one. Ron Martinelli was retained as an expert
Speaker 1: witness by the new Mexico Attorney General on behalf of
Speaker 1: the state police. He watched the tape as well. What
Speaker 1: was the challenge for me as a criminologist using our
Speaker 1: audio videologist and breaking it down and showing the judge that, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what it was about. That judge had no idea.
Speaker 1: Martinelli had a phrase he kept saying to me, every
Speaker 1: case is different, which I began to realize was his
Speaker 1: operating principle, kind of like the injunction of the Jesuits.
Speaker 1: To descend into the particular, you have to assume that
Speaker 1: the specifics, the details of the case in question matter.
Speaker 1: His task was to work backwards the shooting, reconstructing the
Speaker 1: hours before. The New Mexico police confronted Angel Navarro until
Speaker 1: he had a complete narrative of that day. One I'd
Speaker 1: like to reporting hard for. This is what he believes
Speaker 1: Angel Navarro did. He drops his girlfriend off and he's
Speaker 1: in a parking lot and he gets out of the
Speaker 1: car and he confronts just some citizen on the street
Speaker 1: and I'm giving you the synopsized version, and he slices
Speaker 1: him with a knife. With a knife, Yes, he cut
Speaker 1: me in the hand with it, and then he leaves.
Speaker 1: M he took off heading shout it looks like Angel
Speaker 1: Navarro still the man's car, and of course the man
Speaker 1: calls the police. They have a good description of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: they have a license plate. There is a bolo put
Speaker 1: out a beyond the lookout four and they end up
Speaker 1: spotting this vehicle on State Highway and so unmarked units
Speaker 1: get behind him initially because they just happened to see him,
Speaker 1: and they start following him, and then a march unit
Speaker 1: comes up and they try to pull him over and
Speaker 1: mister Navarro takes off, but he doesn't take off at
Speaker 1: a really really fast speed because the speed limit in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. I think on this highway went between seventy
Speaker 1: five and eighty and he was only going about eighty
Speaker 1: six miles an hour, So he's clearly not trying to
Speaker 1: elude the officers. He's just driving. He ends up stopping
Speaker 1: in the middle of the highway and they're waiting for him,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to give him some instructions to do
Speaker 1: what we refer to as a felony car stuff, and
Speaker 1: that that doesn't work, and he takes off again, but
Speaker 1: he's going slower and everybody's trying to figure out, what
Speaker 1: is this guy going to do? What's he going to do?
Speaker 1: Navarro drives on for another twelve miles. Then he stops
Speaker 1: in the middle of the highway a second time. The
Speaker 1: officers pull up behind him. He sits in his car
Speaker 1: for three minutes talking on the phone. He's on the
Speaker 1: phone with who with the police? Oh, I see, he
Speaker 1: calls a dispatcher. He's on the phone with the police, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm armed and I'm a bad guy. And so
Speaker 1: when he finally they tell him to get out of
Speaker 1: the car, he gets out of the car and then
Speaker 1: he faces them and they're giving them instructions to step
Speaker 1: away from the vehicle, keep your hands up, do this.
Speaker 1: He turns sideways, he goes into his pocket. They're screaming
Speaker 1: at him, don't do that, don't do that. The whole
Speaker 1: thing is weird, Starting right back with Navarro's attack on
Speaker 1: a stranger in the parking lot. Why commit that crime?
Speaker 1: Why just pick an individual and slice him for no
Speaker 1: reason at all. He hadn't done anything to you. That
Speaker 1: was to get that person to call the police with
Speaker 1: a crime of violence. Okay, he's committed two felonies at
Speaker 1: that point, but he seems to want the police around him,
Speaker 1: so he gets on the phone and tells him, Okay, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm armed. I not only have a knife, but I
Speaker 1: have a gun, and I'm this and I'm that. So
Speaker 1: the question would be, why would you do that? Because
Speaker 1: he is choreographing an eventual death act. If you talk
Speaker 1: to enough people in law enforcement, you'll hear stories like this.
Speaker 1: Joni Johnston, a forensic psychologist who works with Martinelli, tell
Speaker 1: me about a case outside San Diego where a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old boy called nine one from a school parking lot.
Speaker 1: He pointed what turned out to be a BB gun
Speaker 1: at police. When the police told him to drop the weapon,
Speaker 1: he just kept walking towards them until they had no
Speaker 1: choice but to shoot. They later found a suicide note
Speaker 1: on him. Martinellie thinks Angel Navarro's case follows the same pattern,
Speaker 1: like when he stops on the highway, he's trying to
Speaker 1: see how many police officers are there. That's not enough
Speaker 1: police officers, so he leaves again, I need more police officers,
Speaker 1: and this is referred to as guaranteeing the certainty of lothality.
Speaker 1: More police officers bring more guns. More guns mean more
Speaker 1: bullets and more opportunities to shoot at him where he
Speaker 1: would be killed instead of wounded. But the police don't
Speaker 1: have the context. And then when they first encounter mister Navarro,
Speaker 1: it's a classic okay, well, we're just after a guy
Speaker 1: that stabs somebody. That's all they think this is. We're
Speaker 1: just going to go get this guy. He's a guy
Speaker 1: that committed assault with a deadly weapon and another guy.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden he's stopping and they're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out why is this guy stop. You know,
Speaker 1: Angel Navarro wanted the police to kill him, okay, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break it down for you. Okay. Ron Martinelli
Speaker 1: is sitting at his desk. I'm next to him. He
Speaker 1: asked me if I wanted to see the tape. I
Speaker 1: said yes. I didn't ask him how many times he's
Speaker 1: watched it frame by frame. Maybe you get numb to
Speaker 1: it after a while. He doors open. He's a move
Speaker 1: kind of Hawaii. Okay. So the collective knowledge of the
Speaker 1: officers is he's already been involved in one crime of violence,
Speaker 1: and he's got a gun. And officers are trained at
Speaker 1: eighty five percent of all the weapons that are found
Speaker 1: on an individual concealed or found on the waistband okay,
Speaker 1: or in the pockets. So they've told him to put
Speaker 1: his hands up and face the other way. He's not
Speaker 1: doing that. He's looking directly at them. He's trying to see, Okay,
Speaker 1: where is everybody? Have they got their guns out? Look?
Speaker 1: You got to watch his right hand, Okay. His right
Speaker 1: hand is already in his pocket, just getting out of
Speaker 1: the car, right hand in his pocket. He turns a
Speaker 1: bladed side away from the officers so they can't see
Speaker 1: his right hand. He's exposed the left side of his body.
Speaker 1: He's not putting his hands up he's moving to the waistband,
Speaker 1: where officers are trained that people have concealed weapons. The
Speaker 1: police keep shouting for Navarre to put his hands in
Speaker 1: the air, but he doesn't. He turns sideways and he
Speaker 1: reaches his hand into the pocket that's hidden from the
Speaker 1: police officers. See what he's doing here, He's getting them
Speaker 1: all jacked up, right, He's already got that cell phone out.
Speaker 1: He was in his pocket. Now he's put it up
Speaker 1: into his waistband underneath his shirt. Okay, so here we go.
Speaker 1: So watch this goes down super quick. See how he
Speaker 1: goes with both hands. Do you see he's got both hands?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And he starts to bring it up, bring
Speaker 1: his cell phone up. We don't. We don't know that.
Speaker 1: What do we think? And he's turning towards the officers
Speaker 1: and starting to run towards them. That's exactly right, fast,
Speaker 1: by the way. Okay, so what and then you'll hear
Speaker 1: that first shot. Okay, so he's already hit, and he's
Speaker 1: hit abdominally, so now he's on the ground. In Martinelli's analysis,
Speaker 1: virtually everything Navarro did was premeditated, like he had a
Speaker 1: master plan. He slashes the person in the parking lot
Speaker 1: to alert the police. Then he stops on the highway
Speaker 1: to make sure there were enough police there to kill him.
Speaker 1: Martinelli put himself inside Navarro's head. It was hard to
Speaker 1: believe both that Martinelli could read the mind of someone
Speaker 1: he had never met, and that Navarro could have planned
Speaker 1: out this elaborate deception, that he could have been so
Speaker 1: systematic and logical about his own death. I can understand
Speaker 1: why to the Navarros, the whole thing must have seemed
Speaker 1: so baffling and horrifying. But then there's the tape, the
Speaker 1: part where Angel Navarro gets out of the car. There
Speaker 1: are police officers pointing their guns at him, and what
Speaker 1: does he do. You can see him. He pretends like
Speaker 1: his cell phone is a gun. That's the part you
Speaker 1: can't tell from just listening. He's acting it out. Then
Speaker 1: he runs at the police officers, right at them. They
Speaker 1: have their guns drawn. He violates every human instinct. Okay,
Speaker 1: watch what he does. Now he's on the ground. He's
Speaker 1: been shot. He's been shot. He actually was only shot
Speaker 1: in the arm and shot in the stomach. Okay, says,
Speaker 1: no mortal wounds, and he knows he's not dead, but
Speaker 1: he wants to be dead. See what he does. Look
Speaker 1: how quickly he gets up and wears his hand back
Speaker 1: down to the waistband. Okay, so he is going to
Speaker 1: You'll see him start to push that thing out again.
Speaker 1: And they're going only shit. So like he's still on
Speaker 1: the ground, but he's he has lifted up his head
Speaker 1: very quick well, he's lift up his body, his body
Speaker 1: very quickly. But look at where his hand is. He's
Speaker 1: not in a bracing position to stand up. He's into
Speaker 1: the waistband. He doesn't stay down, he doesn't lie still,
Speaker 1: he doesn't put his hand out to lift himself up
Speaker 1: to say something or surrender. He moves his hand to
Speaker 1: his waistband as if he's reaching for a gun again.
Speaker 1: To them, it's re emphasizing holy crime, ey noah, and
Speaker 1: now he's dead, and now he's dead. The term of
Speaker 1: art in law enforcement circles for what happened to Angel
Speaker 1: Navarro is suicide by cop SPC ten percent maybe more
Speaker 1: of police shootings r SPC. People don't like to talk
Speaker 1: about suicide by cop. Part of that is because we
Speaker 1: don't like to talk about suicide period, and part is
Speaker 1: that this particular variant of suicide doesn't fit into our
Speaker 1: existing categories of police shootings. The Navarros sued the state
Speaker 1: of New Mexico for excessive force because they didn't know
Speaker 1: what happened. Then they found out after two and a
Speaker 1: half years the case was dismissed, perhaps not surprisingly, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't make it easier, does it. After we got
Speaker 1: the tape and saw what happened, it was kind of
Speaker 1: like we knew, you know what it was, like, Well,
Speaker 1: we know they're not going to get in trouble for it,
Speaker 1: and we know that he's dead and nothing's going to
Speaker 1: bring him back. So the only option we have, if
Speaker 1: we're any sort of justice or yeah, like justice to
Speaker 1: have that sense of like, okay, at least they were
Speaker 1: like suffered consequences in some way, was to sue them
Speaker 1: financially and sue them for a lot of money. Deaths
Speaker 1: in the family is always hard, But this Philipee now
Speaker 1: had to square the picture of his brother being painted
Speaker 1: by the other side with the angel he knew. He
Speaker 1: wasn't scared to go on the monkey bars and fall
Speaker 1: and break his arm, or you know, go and run
Speaker 1: and play and get dirty in the mud, and so
Speaker 1: you know that there were things, you know, that I
Speaker 1: admired in my brother as far as his sort of
Speaker 1: ability to be to not care so much about what
Speaker 1: people thought, and to be who he was and be
Speaker 1: okay with who he was, and be outgoing and be
Speaker 1: funny and and you know, make jokes or like, wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid to look stupid or embarrass himself or things that.
Speaker 1: Like I just never was like that. I was always
Speaker 1: quite the opposite. Philippe Navarro was sitting us legged on
Speaker 1: his couch with a throw pillow across his lap, picking
Speaker 1: it a seem not angry, thoughtful. A big thing I
Speaker 1: had to reconcile with after he passed was like and
Speaker 1: finding out everything I did find out as far as
Speaker 1: like his mental health and sort of his therapy sessions,
Speaker 1: because they bring out all the information, like documents and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And and you know, seeing that he
Speaker 1: had told his therapist that he was suicidal at points,
Speaker 1: or he felt that he couldn't talk to his family,
Speaker 1: or he felt alone, or he felt depressed, or you know,
Speaker 1: he was drinking. I think he said a fit of
Speaker 1: whiskey or something a day. You know, things that he
Speaker 1: told that none of us knew. And he when I
Speaker 1: saw him he seemed normal, you know, he didn't nothing
Speaker 1: struck me as like, oh, I should you know, make
Speaker 1: sure that he's doing okay, or oh something seems off.
Speaker 1: That's a lot to discover after your brother gets shot.
Speaker 1: Ron Martinelly kept the video running. There was something else
Speaker 1: he wanted to show me, proof of what he meant
Speaker 1: when he said that every case was different. But then
Speaker 1: he declared the trunk. I was going to clear him.
Speaker 1: The officers run towards the stolen suv. They need to
Speaker 1: find out if there's something else in there, someone who's
Speaker 1: another threat or need of help. Then they go to
Speaker 1: Navarro's body on the ground and see just a cell phone,
Speaker 1: not a gun. Everything has slowed down now. The tape
Speaker 1: keeps running and running until you see the officer who
Speaker 1: discovered the cell phone start to walk in and out
Speaker 1: of the camera frame aimlessly. I think this was the
Speaker 1: guy that he looks shaken, but it doesn't he ost.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, why me? Why me? Look at
Speaker 1: him leaning up against the car's head down. That's what
Speaker 1: people don't see. Yeah, not moving? You are you sitting there? Crimes?
Speaker 1: What he's doing? You know, people don't see that. See
Speaker 1: I see that you know, takes off his hat. That's moving.
Speaker 1: I began this three part series on the Jesuits in
Speaker 1: Rome at the Church of the Jesuit learning about the
Speaker 1: teas of the founder of the Jesuit Order, Saint Ignatius
Speaker 1: of Loyola. Saint Ignatius faced aversion of the same world
Speaker 1: we face today, filled with novel problems and intractable conflict,
Speaker 1: and he gave his followers a set of moral instructions
Speaker 1: to set aside principle, to descend into the particular, to
Speaker 1: listen closely. Why because only then can you fulfill one
Speaker 1: of the most important human obligations, to offer consolation to
Speaker 1: those who are suffering. The Navarro family went through a
Speaker 1: brutal to your lawsuit to win a financial settlement, but
Speaker 1: they really weren't after money. Angel Navarro did everything he
Speaker 1: could to kill himself, but that's not what he wanted
Speaker 1: and the police officer by the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Do you think he was fine the minute the legal
Speaker 1: cloud over his conduct was lifted. The reason to watch
Speaker 1: the tape is to understand Felipe Navarro and the special
Speaker 1: pain that comes from seeing someone you love turn into
Speaker 1: someone you don't recognize, and to understand Angel Navarro and
Speaker 1: the kind of devastating illness that would lead someone to
Speaker 1: orchestrate his own death. And then you have to watch
Speaker 1: the tape to the end, to the very end, to
Speaker 1: see a police officer slumped against his squad car, shaking
Speaker 1: with tears, one shooting, three victims, all worthy of our consolation.
Speaker 1: Revisionist History is produced by mil LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
Speaker 1: by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Carli Migliore, Heather Fane,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. Revisionist History is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Suicide
Speaker 1: is a difficult topic. It can be hard for people
Speaker 1: to talk about suicide or get help if they're in danger,
Speaker 1: but there are resources available people want to help. The
Speaker 1: National Suicide Prevention Hotline is one excellent resource. It's free, confidential,
Speaker 1: and available to four hours a day. The number in
Speaker 1: the US is one eight hundred two seven three eight
Speaker 1: two five five one eight hundred two seven three talk